Letters Written in France

296 Pages·2001·13.604 MB·English

by  Helen Maria Williams, Neil Fraistat, Susan S. Lanser

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LETTERS WRITTEN IN FRANCE,
IN THE SUMMER 1790
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Portrait of Helen Maria Williams, engraved by Joseph Singleton (1792)
© Copyright The British Museum
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LETTERS WRITTEN IN
FRANCE,
IN THE SUMMER 1790,
TO A FRIEND IN ENGLAND;
CONTAINING VARIOUS
ANECDOTES RELATIVE TO THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION
Helen Maria Williams
edited by
Neil Fraistat and Susan S. Lanser
Associate Editors
David Brookshire
Stephanie Burley
Stephanie Fitz
Elizabeth Geiman
Carie Jones-Barrow
Erin E. Kelly
David Payne
Robin V Smiles
broadview literary texts
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©2001 The authors
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, trans-
mitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written
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CANCOPY (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency) OneYonge Street, Suite
1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5 — is an infringement of the copyright law.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Williams, Helen Maria, 1762-1827
Letters written in France, in the summer 1790, to a friend in England
(Broadview literary texts)
ISBN 1-55111-255-8
I.Williams, Helen Maria, 1762-1827 — Correspondence. 2. France —
History — Revolution, 1789-1799. 3. Thomas du Fossé, Augustin Francois,
1750-1833. 4. Lettres de cachet. 5. Detention of persons — France —
History — 18th century. I. Lanser, Susan Sniader, 1944- . II. Fraistat, Neil,
1952- . III.Title. IV. Series.
DC146.W54A4 2001 944.04'092 C00-932869-6
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Second printing October 2002
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Contents
Acknowledgments 7
Introduction 9
Helen Maria Williams: A Brief Chronology 51
Contemporary Historical Events 53
A Note on the Text 59
Letters Written in France, in the Summer 1790 61
Appendix A: Excerpts From Later Volumes of Williams's Letters from
France 151
1. Letters from France: Containing Many New Anecdotes
(1792) 151
2. Letters from France: Containing ... Interesting and Original
Information, vol. I (1793) 157
3. Letters from France: Containing ... Interesting and Original
Information, vol. II (1793) 163
4. Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France
[May 1793-July 1794], vol. I (1795) 169
5. Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France
[May 1793-July 1794], vol. II (1795) 173
6. Letters Containing a Sketch of the Scenes ... during the
Tyranny of Robespierre (1795) 177
7. Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France
[July 1794-95] (1796) 185
Appendix B: Selected Poetry by Williams 191
l."To Sensibility" 192
2. A Poem on the Bill Lately Passed for Regulating the Slave Trade 194
3. "The Bastille, A Vision" (from Julia, a Novel; Interspersed with
Some Poetical Pieces) 203
4. A Farewell, for Two Years, to England. A Poem 207
Appendix C: Critical Reviews of Letters Written in France 213
1. The Analytical Review 213
2. The General Magazine 214
3. The Monthly Review 215
4. The Universal Magazine 216
5. The Critical Review 217
6. The Gentleman's Magazine 218
7. The English Review 219
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Appendix D: Other Contemporary Responses to Letters Written in
France 221
1. Edward Jerningham, "On Reading 'Letters Written from
France'" 221
2. Hester Thrale Piozzi, from Thraliana 221
3. Two Letters by Anna Seward 222
4. Society of Friends of the Constitution at Rouen 225
5. Laetitia Matilda Hawkins, from Letters on the Female Mind 227
6. William Wordsworth, from The Prelude (1805), Book IX 229
Appendix E: Contemporary Responses to Williams 235
1. William Wordsworth 235
2.JamesBoswell 236
3. The Anti-Jacobin Review 237
4. Mary Pilkington 237
5. Henry Crabb Robinson 238
6. Williams's Obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine 240
Appendix F:The French Revolution: Selected Primary
Documents 243
1. Declaration of The Rights of Man and Citizen 243
2. Olympe de Gouges, "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and
Female Citizen" 246
3. From Address to the National Assembly Supporting Abolition of the Slave
Trade 249
4. The Fete de la Federation as described by the London Times 253
5. Beneficial Effects of the French Revolution 260
Appendix G: The French Revolution: Selected Early British
Responses 263
1. Richard Price, from A Discourse on the Love of Our Country 263
2. Edmund Burke, from Reflections on the Revolution in France 266
3. Mary Wbllstonecraft, from A Vindication of the Rights of Men 273
4. Thomas Paine, from The Rights of Man 276
5. Hannah More, from Village Politics 282
6. Anna Barbauld,"To a Great Nation" 286
7. Mary Alcock,"Instructions ... for the Mob in England" 288
Selected Bibliography 291
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Acknowledgments
This classroom edition had its origin within a classroom of our
own, a graduate seminar we co-directed on Romanticism and
Revolution at the University of Maryland in spring 1998. As part
of the syllabus, we assigned Helen Maria Williams s Letters Written in
France, using photocopies of the first edition. Our students' enthu-
siasm for the book led eight members of the seminar to collaborate
with us in creating this volume as both a course project and a
Broadview Literary Text. Our first and greatest debt, therefore, is to
this talented and dedicated group, whose names are listed as associ-
ate editors on the title page and without whom this project would
not have been realized.
For the final version we owe additional debts of gratitude. Deb-
orah Kennedy, whose research sheds new light on Williams s life
and work, was enormously generous in sharing her extensive
knowledge and in reviewing our introduction and chronology. Jack
Undank graciously read and significantly improved our translations
from the French. Curators at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the
Johns Hopkins University Library, University of Maryland Library,
University of North Carolina Library, the Bibliotheque nationale
de France, and the British Museum were crucially cooperative. At
Broadview, Don LePan, Mical Moser, Barbara Conolly Eugene
Benson, and Judith Earnshaw have been encouraging, astute, help-
ful, and patient editors. Finally, we thank Matthew Bray (Ph.D.
Maryland, 1994), whose brilliant scholarship has informed our
understanding of the Letters and helped inspire us to create an edi-
tion enabling students and scholars better to appreciate Williams s
importance to British Romanticism and Revolutionary history.
LETTERS WRITTEN IN FRANCE 7
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Federation generale des Francais [Festival of Federation], 1790. Photo courtesy of the Bibliotheque nationale de France.
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Introduction
Early on the morning of July 14,1790, thousands of men and women
gathered near the ruins of France s most infamous prison, the Bastille,
in the Marais district on Paris s Right Bank. National guards and civic
leaders from all over France, along with veterans, musicians, and
schoolboys, formed an immense procession that was joined by mem-
bers of the National Assembly when it reached the royal palace of the
Tuileries. Some thirty thousand strong and undaunted by rain, the
marchers crossed the Seine and entered the Champ de Mars, the mil-
itary field where the Eiffel Tower now stands.
Thus began the Fete de la Federation, probably the most elabo-
rate public spectacle in European history, celebrating France s com-
mitment to unity and harmony on the first anniversary of the fall
of the Bastille. Preparations for the Festival had already displayed the
new national spirit, for when a paid crew of fifteen thousand could
not excavate the field on time, patriots from duchesses to day-
laborers joined in, erecting a vast amphitheatre with three tri-
umphal arches and thirty tiers of seats, and setting a National Altar
upon a pavilion draped in the red, white, and blue of the Revolu-
tionary tricolor and adorned with the royal fleur de lys.
A twenty-nine year-old English poet named Helen Maria
Williams was among those present at the great Festival. An enthu-
siastic supporter of the Revolution even before she visited France,
Williams was overwhelmed by the beauty and significance of the
spectacle and later said that it sealed her political vision.1 It is
appropriate, then, that the Festival of Federation also served as the
inaugural scene for Williams s eight-volume eyewitness history of
the Revolution, which begins with the Letters Written in France, in
the Summer 1790. For Williams, as for the multitude of spectators
gathered at the Champ de Mars, the triumphal Festival expressed in
its imagery the deeply felt aspirations for a constitutional process
that was already dramatically reforming French government and
transforming French society.
The revolution inaugurated in 1789 was not Frances first
challenge to absolutist authority, and many of the ills it sought to
ameliorate had festered for decades or centuries. Demands for civil
1 Helen Maria Williams, Souvenirs de la Revolution fmn$aise (Paris, 1827) 7.
LETTERS WRITTEN IN FRANCE 9